• The Canucks bounced Kane and the Blackhawks out of the playoffs in a Game 7 watched by Real Sports Fans everywhere. This was quite a big deal for Vancouver fans, and in the runup to the game, people waxed analogical about both the prospect of blowing a 3-0 series lead ("Like a girl who marries this great guy, trusts him completely, buys a house together, has a family with him, then finds out he's a hit man for the mob") and the meaning of a victory ("[L]ike a death-row prisoner who was pardoned and is breathing free air again.") Meanwhile, what they're saying in Chicago about the defending and now deposed Stanley Cup champions tells me everything I need to know about the business of hockey in the age of Gary Bettman:

But this team is not that far away. It's two, maybe three moves from being elite again.

• The Bulls dispatched the Pacers and looked very good for the first time in the playoffs, even though Carlos Boozer spent yet another game turning Tyler Hansbrough into Moses Malone. Everyone's talking about Rose's 25 and 6 — plus one stuff of Roy Hibbert that I think he may have blocked with his shoe — but after last night I don't think there's any debate that Joakim Noah is the most effective irritant the game has seen since Rodman teleported back to the mothership.